The transformation of rubber from a useless substance to a resilient product was a simple as adding a missing process—heat, in the form of steam. Charles Goodyear named the process vulcanization after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.
Today it’s hard to imagine life without Goodyear’s rubber. There would be no electricity, no cars, no computers, no bicycles, no radios, or televisions, no phones. We wouldn’t have airplanes, washing machines, or toasters. We wouldn’t even have our favorite pair of old sneakers.
Scientists have known the secret of accelerants for decades, adding them to speed up chemical reactions, achieving results more quickly. Accelerators work the same way in business, making the things you’re doing work better, faster, and more smoothly, without throwing you off balance.
The relationship between a management accelerant and improved business results is highly predictable. In the workplace, there are few accelerators with more impact than individual and team coaching.
Solid coaching skills are a valuable asset for leaders and managers at all levels.
A 2018 study found that leaders who frequently coached their employees and teams improved their results by 21 percent.
The 4 Realities That Compel Leaders At All Levels To Be More Coach-Like
Reality #1: Change is inevitable. Even the most successful organizations cannot rest on their laurels. They must continually remake themselves or risk falling from glory. Because today’s excellence is not a guarantee for tomorrow’s success, leaders who bask in complacency are due for rude awakening.
Reality #2: People must learn and adapt quickly. Your people’s skills will become obsolete—in the same way technologies become outdated—if you rely solely on today’s capabilities to lead your company into the future. You cannot just hire talented people, teach them to do their jobs, and leave them alone. To cope with the inevitability of changing work demands, you need a work force that can learn new skills and adapt quickly.
One way or another, most people figure out how to do their jobs. But development by default is too passive to achieve the standards of excellence and versatility that you must meet. Because the world refuses to wait for those who say “slow down while I gain more experience,” organizations are looking for better and faster ways to achieve breakthrough performance with their people. Experience and time alone are slow and inefficient teachers. You need to jump start learning and make sure it runs full speed in the right direction.
Reality #3: Employees want to grow. Lifelong employment in the same job is a career path found only in the history books. Millennials at 33 percent, now represent the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, surpassing the Baby Boomer group, which has declined to 31%. And Millennials are not just pursuing job satisfaction they are pursuing development.
How Coaching Benefits the Entire Organization
The benefits of coaching seem to be very employee-oriented; however, looking at the bigger picture, your organization as a whole gains from having effective coaching sessions. Workplace Psychology, a website which covers areas of the workplace and workers from a scholarly perspective, offers some advantages of integrating coaching in your organization. I have elaborated their top three reasons:
1. Overcome costly and time-consuming performance problems: many companies still rely on their annual performance to evaluate their employees’ performance. By integrating coaching in your organization, you can identify performance problems easier and quicker, and take the appropriate measures to overcome these hurdles such as re-aligning the employees’ objectives, or offering training/mentoring to help your employees succeed.
2. Strengthen employees’ skills and results: Coaching allows employees to gain valuable skills and knowledge from their coach – whether it is you or a senior employee – which will eventually increase the productivity of your organization. Coaching also provides you with how the employees are performing; by following up with their progress, you may discover that they possess skills that you were not aware of. Therefore coaching helps you identify the competencies of your team and you may then take the initiative to strengthen these skills by encouraging them to take advanced classes or/and attend seminars.
3. Improve retention: when employees are coached, they feel supported and encouraged by their manager and their organization. Coaching is a two-way communication process. You provide feedback to your employees and they are able to use this opportunity to also give feedback. Employees are more likely to stay in your organization if they feel that their voice is being heard by you and senior management. By integrating coaching, you are encouraging your managers and yourself to be more present among your employees. Coaching also allows you to identify employees who fit with your succession planning.
The Secret of the 5% Solution
Many managers when exhorted to coach more and boss less will rightly say, “But my plate is already full. I can’t handle one more obligation. I rarely see my people because I’m so busy and they are scattered all over the place. There’s no way I can do all this.”
You face a dilemma: Simple solutions don’t work for development, yet you don’t have time for complex solutions. So you need a coaching process that attacks the true challenges of getting a variety of people to change and yet is still manageable in light of available time and resources. That process is the 5% solution.
You can be effective and efficient if you focus 5% of your energy and attention on coaching and development. Working smarter—not harder—helps you make the best investment of your time. The secret of efficient coaching is to know your priorities and then to create and seize coaching opportunities that arise in the course of your everyday work. If you are prepared, you can leverage a relatively small investment of your time into a walloping payback.
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To Your Greater Success,
Peter C. Mclees, Principal
Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
Mobile: 323-854-1713
Email: petercmclees@gmail.com
We help organizations and leaders accelerate their results.
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